Professionalism in legal justice is a chimera for the perspective of "just us," a position that allows lawyers to ignore obvious problems of injustice by concentrating only on those identified by the legal profession. The "just us" perspective leads lawyers away from confronting problems inherent in their profession. Unequal access to the law is a particularly evident contradiction of legal professionalism under advanced capitalism; that is, lawyers face internal contradictions between professional idealism and economic realism. Other contradictions in legal professionalism, however, may have greater social consequences, since all professions manifest the division of labor. The division of labor concept not only makes the public dependent on lawyers but also disables clients from evaluating the quality of legal services. The legal profession's response is to take responsibility for insuring quality, although this often degenerates into efforts to prevent anyone from reviewing or controlling quality. Despite lawyer denials, legal services vary significantly in quality, partly as a function of client resources. It is suggested that lawyers defend their privileges of self-regulation by maintaining they represent an essential counterweight to the increasingly imperial state, that many lawyers fail to attain their professional ideals, and that lawyers find economic pressures force them to sacrifice quality for profit. Further, lawyers support the ideals of personal freedom and individual choice, but find themselves involved in a social and economic environment of careerism and competition. 120 references.